National attention was attracted to Southern Illinois industrial development by an article in the October 26th, 1946, issue of Business Week entitled, ”Design for Living, Illinois Style”.
Accompanied by pictures of the Illinois Ordnance Plant, the article traced the history of Southern Illinois and outlined its plans for the future as follows:
One of the biggest white elephants among the surplus war plants, original slated for burial by the War Assets Administration is coming to life in Southern Illinois. If a group of business leaders there brings off a project they are working at right now, they may succeed in reviving a region that began to go broke in the 1920’s and except for a few years of war prosperity has been on relief ever since.
FOR SCRAP—The plant is the government’s $30 million dollar shell and bomb loading Illinois Ordinance Plant, between Carbondale and Marion in the southern tip of the state. WAA considered it too big to sell or rent as a unit; its many widely scattered buildings made it unusable by a single manufacturer. The government was ready to peddle it off for scrap.
But the business leaders of the section interceded and won for the plant a reprieve from its death sentence. They wheedled the agency into trying to lease buildings in small parcels to small manufacturers. WAA will run and advertising campaign next month to attract prospective tenants from all the major industrial cities east of the Mississippi.
20 YEAR DEPRESSION—Back of WAA’s decision lies the story of the fight Southern Illinois has been putting up for years to save itself from bankruptcy. The 16 county section at the southern tip of the state, known as Egypt began going into the doldrums 20 years ago.
Soon after the American Revolution, pioneers came down the Ohio River on flat boats, settled here and farmed many a modest fortune from the rich virgin soil, but also they mined out its fertility.
Fifty years ago Egypt had its second streak of prosperity when rich coal fields were developed. But these began playing out in the mid-1920’s and those owners who kept big mines in operation put in full mechanization, shrinking the job opportunities still further. The depression of the 1930’s almost finished off the area; at one time, 61% of the population was on relief and another 25% barely kept off the rolls.
NEW WATER SUPPLY—All through the 1930’s, Southern Illinois leaders worried over ways to rebuild the prosperity of the area. One thing they saw at once that Egypt would be an economic orphan until it obtained an adequate source of water for industry. They successfully lobbied a grandiose plan, got 70,000 acre Crab Orchard Lake built with WPA labor.
Then, even before Pearl Harbor, they were hammering at Army Ordinance to utilize Crab Orchard water and Egypt’s big force of unemployed labor in a major war plant. Now they are working like beavers to restore the income that V.J. Day removed. (Ordill closed on VJ Day in 1945 at the end of the war.)
PROSPECTS—Their plan is simple and forth right; Persuade enough businessmen to move into the plant and both the U.S. Treasury and Southern Illinois will win. Five years of rental income should five Uncle Sam more dollars from this investment than the probable $500,000 it would sell for as salvage. And the employment that the lessees will provide for several thousand workers will go far toward putting Southern Illinois back on it feet.
Renamed Lake Crab Orchard Development, the giant plant consists of over 500 buildings scattered over 22,000 acres around the lake. Of these, 300 buildings with 1,500,000 square feet of floor space are suitable for light manufacturing. Basic annual rental rate is 20 cents per square foot.
LABOR SUPPLY—Biggest attraction of the plant, however, for manufacturers scratching the bottom of the barrel in labor short industrial cities, is the district’s labor surplus.
U.S. Employment Service surveys of the six county area surrounding the plant put the total unemployed at the end of September (1946) at 9,500. In midsummer, before workers emigrated for seasonal work in canneries, the total was 12,000. U.S.E.S. estimates that if women at home, not listed as unemployed but actually eager for work are counted, 15,000 workers can easily be found in the area.
By mid-December, most of the persona now drawing on unemployment compensation will have exhausted their benefits. Nobody knows what will happen then unless new industries hire them.
PROGRESS—Six tenants have already signed up to move into their big plant. Sangamo Electric Company has taken 53,000 sq. ft. for its condenser manufacturing division and hopes to employ 500. Smoler Brothers, Chicago dress manufacturers, will use 10,000 sq. ft. in a pilot operation to train workers until their big new plant at neighboring Herrin, Illinois is completed.
Other tenants are a furniture company, two Chicago manufacturers of condensers and transformers, and a commercial blue printer. Backers of the project hope 1,000 persons will be employed at the plant by the first of the year.
Business leaders of Southern Illinois realized some years ago that the job of lifting the area out of its 20 year depression was too big for the individual communities to handle separately. To assure the best possible overall job, they banded together into a sort of super chamber of commerce, Southern Illinois, Inc.
The corporation’s first task was to survey the area’s resources; since then it has been actively promoting the region through publicity and by personal search for new industries.
The individual communities have been doing their part too. Two years ago, Herrin raised a $100,000 fund to attract new industries. Three have moved into the town so far. Industrial Casting co now employs 60 workers in a building which was remodeled with $7,000 from the fund. A Chicago firm, Smoler Bros., borrowed $50,000 from the fund, is building a $185,000 dress factory to employ 450 women. Borg-Warner’s Norge Division has built a 600 worker washing machine factory on a site donated by the Herrin Chamber of Commerce.
Other communities have started, or are planning, campaigns for funds. Murphysboro has already collected $60,000 of its $100,000 goal.
(Article extracted from the Marion Daily Republican, November 20, 1946)